Basic Concepts in Organic Stereochemistry (PDF)

Professor Sunil Kumar Talapatra has taught stereochemistry, conformational analysis, reaction mechanisms and alkaloids in the postgraduate classes of Calcutta University and Presidency College (now University), Kolkata, and has been a Guest teacher in stereochemistry in universities of W. Bengal and Tripura for more than three decades. He conducted his PhD (CU) and post-doctoral work with Professor (Mrs) Asima Chatterjee and then further post-doctoral work (4 yr) with Professor Michael P Cava at OSU, Columbus. He was a Visiting Scientist at the Illinois U (Chicago), UCSC Santa Cruz, and UCSD San Diego. As a UNESCO Senior Visiting Scientist (1982) he was briefly associated with Professors E J Corey, K Nakanishi, H Rapoport, J Meinwald, N Takahashi, K Mori, and Y Kanaoka. He is the author of more than 175 research papers and a recipient of several awards; he was a British Council Guest Visitor (1973), took part in INSA and UGC Cultural Exchange Programmes in Hungary and Czechoslovakiaand was elected CChem FRIC (London) in 1974. He is a former President of the Indian Chemical Society (2002 & 2003), currently Advisor, and has been the Senior-most Vice-President of the Indian Science News Association (since 2008). Professor Talapatra's research contributions include the discovery, structure elucidation and stereochemistry of more than 100 new bioactive secondary metabolites, isolated from medicinal plants, mostly alkaloids and terpenoids of different classes, coumarins and other oxygen heterocycles, polyphenolics, cardiac glycosides and one new C26 tetracyclic diamine from a marine sponge. He published more than 175 research papers. 25 Students obtained the PhD degree of the Calcutta University under his guidance, and he co-supervised more than 40 PhD students and post-doctoral fellows. Many of them joined Universities, IIT Kharagpore, Research Institutes, and Colleges, and pursued own teaching and research careers. Professor Talapatra was a nominator forthe Nobel Prize